


Morrison

by uvvo



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Devil! Mercy, Emotional Manipulation, Gen, Mental Health Issues, Mercy-centric, Moral Dilemmas, Moral corruption, OOC Mercy, Tags Contain Spoilers, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-29
Updated: 2017-04-29
Packaged: 2018-10-25 05:40:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10757871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/uvvo/pseuds/uvvo
Summary: How Jack Morrison led the Overwatch Recall to a successful victory over Talon, saved the world from another Omnic Crisis, and destroyed himself in the process.The devil's in the details.





	Morrison

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Neostone138](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neostone138/gifts).



**2076, November 2nd**

  


There’s been an emptiness in his gut since Geneva. He didn’t notice it at first— the subtle echo as emotion travels through his body and across the uncharted hollow. A life of sleeping in roadside ditches and watching the fall of Overwatch at the hands of U.N. trials had kept him too busy to worry about things other than his immediate safety in the early days after the explosion. Running from phantoms of the past with tangible hands is an excellent distraction from the growing cavern inside him, letting it bide its time as he makes his way across Europe in search of anonymity. Even as he dons the tricolored leather jacket that marks his new identity as a wanted vigilante, it hides—

  


Until he lies down to sleep in a derelict Overwatch safehouse more than a year later, staring at the ceiling as he waits for sleep to take him, safe for the first time in months. The U.N. trials are over, no one will come looking for him, and the numbness inside him is suddenly so apparent that his eyes water from the intensity of the sheer nothingness.

  


The gnawing comes next, a dull ache at the edges of his internal void, like Nidhogg chewing at the roots of Yggdrasil.

  


He labels it ‘survivor’s guilt’ and goes to sleep, eager to write off the sensation as a psychological side effect of watching the destruction of everything he’s built. The feeling of facets of himself crumbling away and disappearing is a consequence of untreated trauma, of casting off all semblances of relationships and nothing more, nothing less.

  
That doesn’t change the fact that the hollow is still there when he wakes up, reminding him that he let all those people under his command die because he was too dense to see the threat under his own nose. He doesn’t deign to give  _ that person _ a name in his head, if they can even be called a person, because he wants to forget as many details as he can. He buries them deep, as deep as he can in his conscious, and does his best to just forget, so he can dull all the fucking  _ hate _ he feels. The more he hates, the faster the gnawing in his gut goes, and god, he doesn’t think he can handle to lose any more of himself than he already has.

  


Even with his mental defenses, sometimes he still has nightmares about the explosion. Sometimes he wakes up with a smiling face burned into the back of his eyelids, whispering things to him. It always tells him the truth— that the explosion of the swiss base was his fault. That he could have prevented everything.   
  
That he was a fool to ever trust them, and he’s a fool to think that the growing emptiness inside him is  _ just guilt _ .

  


This ouroboros like cycle of introspection and rumination is why he fills his mind with the sights of Dorado as he walks back to the ramshackle apartment he’s been holing up in for the past month. All around him, Dorado is aflame with the lights of the dead, shrouding Seventy Six in the warm glow of flickering candle light. The determination of a hundred candles beats back the tar black darkness of the night in a way that should be comforting, but—    
  
It’s not.   
  
The candles that cover every possible surface only serve to light up the marigold jungles around memorial altars, making the eyes of the deceased glint like wildcats laying in wait. He can feel them watching him, calling to feeling in his gut as he steps on colorful cellophane wrappers  that crunch like broken glass.  The soft lights of Dorado are the only things tethering him to the earth  at this point, keeping him to themselves instead of letting the vast blackness of the night sky suck him up like he wishes it would.   
  
He’s glad the walk home is only fifteen minutes, so he can drown himself in liquor and pass out, as usual. That’s the plan, anyways, until he finds his front door unlocked and he sees a wool coat tossed over the threadbare armchair in the sitting room.    
  
He really should have been expecting this visit sooner. There was never any denying that she knew where he was and that he was aware of this— it was a silent understanding from across the globe. Even if he had managed to hide himself away even further, she would have found him. Angela Ziegler always found her patients.   
  
“You make house calls frequently?” Seventy Six doesn’t bother flicking on the lights in the intermediate room between the kitchen and the door, opting instead to make his way directly to the rickety liquor cabinet above the dishwasher.   
  
“Only to my favorite patients,” she smile pleasantly, looking up from the data pad in her hands. 

  


“Guess I should consider myself lucky then.” He doesn’t look at her as he grabs a bottle of gin out of the cabinet and pours two full glasses of liquor that would find better use as paint thinner than as a drink.   
  
He can feel her eyes on his back.   
  
  


“Are you going to take that mask off? I’d like to see your face again, Jack.”   
  
Seventy Six straightens up, rolling a shoulder around experimentally. He doesn’t mind taking his mask off, but he hesitates to remove it anyways. His anxiety is less based in vanity and more in the fact that he’s not sure if he can bear to turn around and look at her face. Even with the Valkyrie suit and the lab coat off, she practically  _ smells _ of Overwatch. The names of his deceased comrades are already running through his head like a faucet he can’t turn off, and he doesn’t want to test his mental state by adding to his distress.   
  


The gnawing in his gut is back in full force.

  


She waits patiently.

  
  
  


Setting the mask down quietly, he turns around and sets the glasses on the table. The wooden chair he sits on sighs in unison with him as he plops himself down and slides one glass towards her. Across from him, even in the harsh lighting of a single bulb, Angela looks positively angelic. A messy ponytail can’ detract from the soft curves of her face, and neither can the simplicity of her dark clothing. Even after all these years, she still looks like an angel given human form.

  


Seventy Six feels nauseous looking at her.

  


“You look the same.”

  


She smiles at him, eyes shining in amusement. “Jack Morrison. Your hair got white.”

  
“I guess genetic therapy couldn’t save me from everything.” He pauses for a moment. “You know that’s not who I am anymore.”   
  
Angela looks at him flatly. “Don’t be melodramatic. You’re still the same man you were before Geneva, even if you don’t go by that name.”   
  
The only response Jack gives her is pushing her untouched glass further towards her as he takes a sip of his own drink. Mercy hardly looks amused.   
  
“Really, Jack, I can’t help you if you refuse to move on.” She takes a taste of her own drink and arches a brow, fixing her cool gaze on him. “It’s only Wednesday night. I hope you’re not trying to kill me.”   
  
He meets her stare in silence as he finishes the rest of his glass. The spirits burn as they go down his throat, but he can hardly feel it now. The void in his gut is more prominent than ever, shifting and churning like it’s about to burst out of his belly and suck the whole world in. Finishing his glass, he sets it down with an audible clunk.   
  


  


“Why are you here.”   
  
Angela sighs softly, running a hand through her bangs. 

  


“Straight to the point, hmm? There’s no harm in small talk, Jack— It’s been seven years since we’ve seen each other.”   
  
Jack stares at her in silence, gritting his teeth in frustration as he tries to keep his face impassive as possible.

  


“Well.” She sighs softly again, studying his face. “There’s been a recall. Winston’s calling all of the surviving members of Overwatch back to Gibraltar to fight Talon—”   
  
“Get out.” His voice is calm and forceful, but he doesn’t know how much longer he can keep up the facade of self control with the alcohol working its way into his blood and his emotions lighting his mind on fire. His eyes are beginning to water, and he can’t bring himself to look at her because as much as he was the posterchild for Overwatch,  _ so was she _ .    
  
“Jack,” she starts, changing her tone to the one he knows she only uses for unruly patients.    
  
“Stop. Just— Just go. I can’t— I can’t look those people in the eyes after—” He tries to pause briefly  to blink the mist out of his eyes and collect his thoughts, but his voice is too shaky to go on. He can only stare at the table, vision blurry with tears, praying to god that she won’t press further.

  


“Jack. They need a leader.”   
  
Jack stays quiet, hands tightening into fists as he tries to keep some semblance of compsure.   
  
“They will die without you.”   
  
She turns and collects her things from the darkened living room silently, and exits. As soon as the door’s shut, he messily pours himself three more fingers of liquor and downs it in one go.   
  


\--

  


….Establishing connection..

…   
…   
…   
...Transmitting Data…   
…   
...   
ODIN System [Version 2.7.0032] Online   
Q:\ODIN>_   
Q:\ODIN>find 151176-20594.txt -exec cat { };

…

Access Denied   
Q:\> Q:\ODIN\152076\84jfcm3u90sqf.exe

…

…

Welcome, Agent #20594

Q:\ODIN\> Q:\20594\find 151176-20954.txt -exec cat { };   
Finding file.   
Opening file.

  
Date of Entry: 3 November, 2076

  


FROM: AGENT #20594, CALLSIGN: REAPER   
TO: COMMANDER, TALON GROUP B

  
SUBJ: STRIKE TEAM UMBRA MISSION REPORT FOR OPERATION FIMBULWINTER

  
At 2200 hours, Target was sighted entering apartment in Dorado, Mexico. Agent #20348, Callsign: WIDOWMAKER refrained from engaging target due to high number of civilian witnesses, risking the cover nature of this operation.    
  
Target was observed interacting with another former agent of Overwatch, and left the apartment complex at an unknown time. Agent #20348 will continue surveillance until target is available for extraction. 

  


COPY TO:    
COMMANDING OFFICER, TALON INTELLIGENCE CORP

  


\--

  
Ambling to the bathroom in a drunken haze, Seventy Six strips the rest of his gear off. The extra satchels and straps make a lazy trail across the floor, disjointedly winding through the barren living room. The strap of one  catches underneath the bathroom door as he opens it, dragging a half-empty pack of ammo on the floor with it. 

  


The porcelain sink seems like it might almost break under his grip as he leans on it, staring himself down in the mirror with a wide eyed look. His eyes are bloodshot, wilder than he remembers them, piercing. He feels like he can see into his own heart doing this, but at the same time, his face is a foreign, impenetrable mask. 

  


He’s so caught up in his own reflection, trying to process that what he’s seeing is himself that he almost doesn’t feel the sudden shift in his body as his stomach prepares to expel the remaining liquor. 

  


\--

  


Seventy Six wakes up tangled in his sheets the next morning, startled by his sudden sobriety. Everything is achingly clear at the moment- especially his pounding headache and the bitter november air filling the room. His knuckles are chapped and splitting from the cold, but he doesn’t have the energy to reach over and close the window that he must have drunkenly left open.  He’s content just to lie in bed catatonically.

  


Or, he is until his mind becomes so infested with the invasive thought of the names of all the casualties from the base explosion that he grabs a datapad off of the dresser and opens the news, desperate for something to distract him. There’s a slight pause before the site can buffer, and 76 takes the opportunity to prop himself up slightly on a stack of pillows that’s gone far too long without a decent wash. 

  


**OMNIC RIGHTS ACTIVIST TEKHARTHA MONDATTA ASSASSINATED**

  


The feeling of horror that flits him is so brief that he almost doesn’t feel it before he’s plunged into emotional numbness. He scrolls down the front page a measure,

  


**BOKLOVO DESTROYED IN ATTACK BY DISGRUNTLED ENGINEER**

  


And keeps scrolling,

  


**OUTLAW JESSE MCCREE  ROBS HYPERTRAIN**

  


And he closes the website.

His mind can’t handle this, not this early, not after last night. He just wants a brief reprieve from his self-depreciating internal monologue and the growing hole inside him, but that doesn’t seem to be in the cards for him today.

  


Sighing, 76 sits up, staring at the wall across from him.

  


It’s ten in the morning. 

  


Gibraltar is an ocean and a half away.

  


If he wants to make it before the world completely goes to shit, he better get going.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! this is my first fanfic so please be gentle (*´ω｀*)


End file.
